Question

Acceptable to post IPUMS data file on a data collection website?

I'll be adding a new title to your bibliography next year, as soon as the fall publication date is firm, and the publisher has suggested that I post my data on the Harvard Dataverse site. My own data consists of lists of Union soldiers from 94 companies, with their status above or below the median wealth of their states. That median wealth was determined by information provided by IPUMS in several different files sent to me nearly two years ago. If I included those long IPUMS files calculating median wealth by state with my own lists of soldiers, would that constitute a violation of my agreement not to "distribute" IPUMS data (as I think it was phrased)? I could simply list the median wealth for each state as your 1860 sample determined it, but your files would document how it was accomplished.

Staff Answer

It will be okay to post your data along with your publication. The restriction for redistribution of IPUMS USA data regards the redistribution of Full Count data. For sample and aggregated data from IPUMS USA, you may publish this data to meet journal requirements. Thanks for checking with us.

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